the national at the sidney myer music bowl

Saturday was the kind of day that brought on low expectations for Sunday; late in the afternoon, when I'd tried to convince the Rocket to come play with me instead of banging on her father's laptop, she wailed, "No, mummy!" and physically pushed me away. It's not the first time she's done that - actually whenever he's around I am about as useful to her as a pair of shoes she's grown out of - and I don't take it personally. (In fact, I love that they adore each other. It's like when your two best friends get along, and then you all get to hang out together.) But this time, it was hot, and I was frustrated, and stressed - I can't even remember why - and I yelled, "Fine!" and stormed out of the house, thundered down the street to the park and then continued the metaphor by raining all over my face on the swings. After about five minutes of furiously not tweeting vague things about my feels (and one minute of doing exactly that), the Rocket and Chris came down the path. She sang, "Mummy!" and then came over and pushed me on the swings until I swung back and knocked her over with my ass. By that time, I was done with my rage. Apparently when I left she called out for me, and when Chris asked her which direction I went, she led him straight there. (Though, you know, it was also the playground, so I'm not trying to get too deep here.) Later, I rained on Chris about how hard it can be to have the same relationship when the affection is shared with another, and our time together is so short, and sometimes, around work and the creative outlets that are exploding for both of us this year, we are just so bone tired. We don't have movie marathons, or go out for dinner all the time, or spend all day in the city just wandering around. We laugh with our daughter and love each other completely, but it is not the same.

Sunday dawned into a bright hot forty degree day, and my eyes still hurt from the day before, crying and then sitting in front of the air conditioner, all my moisture leached from my face. I took my headache into work, and it was fixed slightly by coworkers trying pressure points and three of us pitching in to buy the biggest serving of hot chips from the sushi place across the road to eat upstairs in the kitchen (we called it "a managerial conference about salt"); I took all the crispy ones and they didn't even fight me for them. Still, when I left, the headache was there, at the front of my forehead. I still had to get home, clean, facilitate two babysitter changeovers, then get ready to go out for our date, and it was one of those days when those very simple things seemed unexpectedly hard.

At six thirty we were on the train. It was quiet, and the heat had mostly left the city, though still stagnated in warm corners without airflow. We were alone together, and there was no one between us to yell for food or ask us to read Dr Seuss' Hop on Pop over and over again. We got to talk about work, and about our days, and about his band and my committee, and we got to hold hands. We ate Lord of the Fries in the Alexandra Gardens and watched the slow migration of humans from Flinders Street Station to the Sidney Myer Music Bowl, before walking alongside them.

I'd never been before; I couldn't even place it in on the map in my head. It's so big, I couldn't believe I'd missed it. I poured water out of my bottle over the fence and we went in, snaked our way through the picnic blankets set up on the grass, and found a patch of grass. Usually, we get to gigs early, and I go straight to the front. It's the curse of the five-two adult; someone taller is always in front of me anyway. This time, even though Chris said we could go find a spot by the fence, I was happy to stay further back. The crew setting up were far away enough to be featureless, but it had never mattered less. The sky was clear, the temperature just cool enough to make me idly wish I'd worn an extra layer but not so cold that I could justify spending eighty dollars on a hoodie from the merchandise stall. We nudged up against one another and listened to Luluc, the support band, watching them on the screens set up on either side as they filled me with mellow. I went and got us some Cokes, thought about a pizza, or banh mi, or anything - the whole concept of food vans at a gig was new and dizzying, but I was in that kind of mood, where the smell of smoked garlic was enough to make me giddy just about everything. And Melbourne was putting on her best face, the buildings lighting up the sky, the moon three-quarters-full and centred directly above the stage, bats flying overhead, and everyone around us was beautiful, every single person, even me. The people in front of us had brought a picnic with corn chips, crackers, dip, jaffa cakes, chocolate wheatens. I considered giving them two dollars for a handful of chips, maybe making some new friends.

Eight thirty, and The National took the stage. Everyone stood up. They were tiny, and the sound was big. I had to Google the setlist, right now, to see what they played, and I looked at that list and couldn't remember all the moments that broke into me. I love The National, more than almost any band, but I can't tell you the names of their songs, even though I can sing them, even though they don't always make sense. I know they sang everything I wanted them to. I know that I almost cried when they performed Demons from Trouble Will Find Me; I know that when Matt Berninger hollered Squalor Victoria that I almost burst out of my skin. I know that I couldn't remember loving Melbourne as much as I did when we all sang along, even when everyone sang that we were evil to Conversation 16, but especially when everyone closed their eyes and turned Bloodbuzz Ohio into something new, and when it ended, as it had last time we saw them, with an acoustic singalong to Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks. There were times when songs ended with me applauding hard and then hitting Chris excitedly on the arm. When I was a kid, I used to express joy by flapping my arms like a bird (now let us all never mention this again), and this was full of moments where, for the first time in a while, I had to hold onto something - Chris, my pockets, my drink - to prevent the urge from breaking through.

I couldn't sustain the heightened emotion for the entire two hours. During a spate of songs that weren't my favourites I started looking around, thinking of getting a cider, wishing people wouldn't smoke, measuring by city skyscrapers where the moon had moved to, losing the moment that I had immersed myself in so much. Then there was England, and everyone was singing again, and I was too, and the trumpet player belted out an incredible solo and the notes cut me into pieces. There was more, there was a lot, there was dusk and night and stars, not many because it's the city and the state was on fire, but they were bright and they were there, and by the end of it everything had been solved, all my problems were over, and all my sorrows were left behind on the grass with the crushed Heineken cans and banh mi wrappers.

As we sat together on the train home, humming songs and swapping gifs we'd found on the internet, I finally noticed that my headache had gone. 

wanda jackson, the party ain't over

Produced and performed on by no-longer-a-White-Stripe Jack White (who is thanked in the liner notes for “having the faith in me that I could still ‘rock out’”), Wanda Jackson—music’s hottest septuagenarian—has returned with a new hot-pink rockabilly album for me to dance (some would term it “flail”) to in my car. Right from the start, with the awesome drums and brass burst of “Shakin’ All Over”, the album immediately changes the mood of a room and whoever is fortunate enough to be within listening distance. Her voice just still has so much power and brashness that she sounds like she could still be the teenager belting out tunes back in the fifties.

That first track, along with her sassy version of “Rum and Coca-Cola” (aka the only song in the world that my eighty-year-old father and I both like), constitute most of my listening, but the whole shebang is really just the most rockin thing you’ll listen to so far this year. As she sings plaintively yet with such zest about being broke in “Busted”, you’ll want to send her money (don’t, she’s doing just fine and I think she just spends it all on sequins and fringed materials). Peppered with sharp little Jack White licks, Her more country-like ballads don’t float my boat as much as the more upbeat/fast-paced tracks do—the energy of those are exactly what I love about rockabilly—but she really doesn’t actually make a bad song, because she’s the Queen of Rockabilly (or First Lady, apparently, which must depend on whether you’re a Monarchist or not) and she is just that great. The digital “shaking” of her voice in the chorus of “Shakin All Over” bothers me a little, making her sound watery and ruining the voice that I adore so vehemently. But I’ll blame Jack for that, because I am biased towards the lovely Wanda. And how couldn’t you be? She’s adorable, and she dated Elvis Presley.



If you haven’t had an opportunity to hear Wanda Jackson before, I discovered her via her song “Funnel of Love”, which was on the (sadly never released) But I’m a Cheerleader soundtrack. I never found that specific version, but go find the version she did with the Cramps—it’s a knockout, and one of the songs I’ve listened to the most over the years.

In summary: Exceeds Expectations, because if I’m not listening to her, I forget just how fun her music is. And as I went to shelve the CD I noticed I have three other albums of hers that I’d forgotten about (hidden by the cat due to overplaying?) Time for a saucy dress, some flicky eyeliner and a Wanda Jackson marathon, I think.

isbells, s/t

There was a time when I thought of of folk music as the favourite only of hippies and horribly optimistic people, and scowled and listened to the tough hardcore music I loved, like Crowded House. Now, I pat my past self on the head patronisingly for thinking like that, and admit bravely that most of the new music I’ve bought has been folk. It puts me in this lovely springtime mood, thinking of long drives to the beach and sepia-toned picnics in the park (full disclosure: I’ve had maybe one park-based picnic in the past six years.) I love folk. The Fleet Foxes and their ethics and beards almost completely took over my life. Iron and Wine as well. (Stick a beard on a man and give him a guitar and watch me swoon. Alas Chris prefers to be clean-shaven, though he does happily bash about on his guitar making up songs about how the cat smells terrible or how we stay up late writing songs about staying up late when we should be getting a sensible night’s sleep.)

One of my lovely co-workers pushed me in the direction of Isbells, saying that they were going to be the new work favourite. (Past favourites, played until we were sick of them, include: The Morning Benders, Broken Bells, Mountain Man, Laura Marling.) And you know what, they are. Just as tender and beautiful as Fleet Foxes, and similar in a way, it’s an album that takes a few voices, two guitars, and creates something that lights up your house and reminds you, like folk does best, of all the little things in life that are so important. A lot of folk seems to put me in this strange clucky mood, all its talk of family life—Feist’s Mushaboom being an example that always gets me sighing—and this album is no different, like with track Maybe’s lines:

I don’t know who you are/you don’t know who I am/maybe you will be mine/and we’ll have a beautiful child/a house and a dog and travel a lot/but the moment’s gone so maybe not

Couple that with a wistful tune and I get all misty-eyed in regards to children. Sometimes I think that if it wasn’t for sappy family songs like Animal Collective’s My Girls I wouldn’t even want to have kids and would continue to be happy living my self-involved life of vanilla cake and ten-hour stretches on the couch reading nonsense on the internet, single-handedly saving the world from overpopulation.

Isbells’ self-titled album is a gorgeous little collection of tunes both melancholy and upbeat, moving and fun. I say “little” because it’s currently at the lovely EP-type price of $14.95, though at ten tracks and forty minutes long it outruns (and outmusics) a lot of other albums I’ve paid more for.

Because I always find something to complain about, I’ll say two things here: that it is quite similar to other folksy music out there, and that these lyrics from first song As Long As It Takes would have been heard by my past self and mocked roundly:

What have you done/To the earth we all love/where do we go from here/who’s responsible/look at the mirror on the wall/what do I tell my child/its future’s gone for life

HIPPIES.

In summary: Meets Expectations, which, because I share many musical tastes with the person who recommended the album to me, were high.

cold war kids, behave yourself ep

This year I bought a more expensive diary than usual. By “more expensive” I don’t mean gold-plated, leather-bound and with accompanying mahogany fountain pen, just a step up from the usual one I get from the newsagency at half-price mid year when the original cost had been all of $2.95. I was determined to write things in this diary. I have been recording important upcoming events—birthdays, a hens night, a wedding. And written on January 21^st was the release date for the new Cold War Kids EP, Behave Yourself.

Cold War Kids are an easily identifiable band. Lead singer Nathan Willett’s voice is undeniably original; it’s almost like he’s just a man who lives in your cd player and shouts at you, but he carries each tune remarkably well. It often means that the singing is at the forefront of each track, and the music is incidental to him belting out another tale of woe and breaking your heart. Not to say the music is in any way bad—it isn’t—but that the piano and guitar and drums are secondary to the vocals, but not in an Australian-Idol-money-note kind of way, just like it is a beautiful instrument on its own. This, their newest EP, has tracks written previous to the last release but that felt special enough to get released on their own; it’s four songs that deserve to be heard.

“Audience” starts off reliably, as I’ve come to expect from Cold War Kids, a band that has yet to let me down. It builds from relative softness and then gets a little harder and grittier, evoking earlier tracks like “Saint John”, where you can feel despair through the piano’s rough notes and lead singer Nathan Willett’s singing “windshield wipers waving for an audience of one”. The bridge is quite lovely, a sweet, melodic segue that for once is allowed to shine over the vocals. It’s a great track that leaves me all upset that EP releases usually mean a band can dawdle on releasing a full-length album for a bit longer. I imagine them scheming, “Haha! Let us release an EP and fool the world!”

“Coffee Spoon” is a warm, full track that relies more heavily on guitar than many other CWK tracks, along with a steady drum beat and some delicate crooning in the background. Keyboards are soft in this song, but they have found enough with the instruments they chose to fill out this song, so it does give you a cosy, enclosed coffee bar kind of feel.

“Santa Ana Winds” is a more similar throwback to older tracks, not quite as raucous as some but still building into something. It’s a short track and a shout out to a place they must love; if you lived where you could feel Santa Ana winds you would probably get a bit giddy from the familiarity: “Take the elevator to the Getty’s highest place, see the cliffs fall to sea, do an about face. Easter on Olvera Street...” and so on.

If it weren’t for the star power of the previous three songs, I could have been a bit stern-faced regarding “Sermons”. Not that it’s not a good track—of course it is—but it is a pared-back version of the track “Sermon vs the Gospel”, a hidden track from their album Robbers and Cowards, so it’s verging on cheating. As he croons, “Lord have mercy on me”, I assume he’s really talking about his listeners. And despite being familiar with the song—we did have Robbers and Cowards on high rotation for a while there—this version still held up, and felt legitimate on its own, so much so that it took me a while to recognise it beyond a faint feeling of familiarity and happiness. It’s not a rocking track, for sure; it’s more the kind of pace you would imagine from a song called “Sermons” where the Lord is mentioned. You can imagine that the Lord’s probably up there grumbling that at least they weren’t so damn loud and angry with this track but could they keep it down anyway, these cold war kids of today etc. The lyrics “I believe the words will change the heart” are sung during this song; a sentiment I really quite adore, and if I was the kind of person who tattooed lyrics upon myself I could see them there (right next to ones I would now regret, like “Won’t you take me to a Funky Town?” and “Mmmmmm Mmmmm” and, for kicks, the All Saints’ most beautifully poetic lyrics, “The way I’m feeling yeah you got me feeling really bad”.)

This indie rock band will continue to be played in this house, and forthcoming albums to be written in my diary (should I continue to use one and not just lose it one day when I am searching through my handbag for that last five cents for my tram ticket, as usually happens.) The scratchiness of the lead singer may turn you off at first, but don’t give up; they are a great, clever band that deserve much fame and love, especially lead singer Nathan as, let’s face it, he’s cute.

vampire weekend, contra

As someone with a big collection of media in her house, I’m always pleased on the infrequent occasion when something matches. I don’t have a matching Harry Potter set because half are hardbacks and half paperbacks; my eight hundred (give or take) Agatha Christie books don’t match because they’re all second-hand and from different decades; I don’t have a matching set of the Buffy television series because I have the last season on DVD and the first six on that mythical format known as “VHS”. And bands are never known for having a theme with their releases; sometimes it’s a plastic case, sometimes a digipak, sometimes it comes in a gigantic house-shaped box (damn you, Peter Gabriel’s Steam single, for being completely inconvenient to shelve anywhere. Honestly, Pete, you’re lucky I like Genesis, though when I think about it, my favourite track is “Land of Confusion” and thus post-you.)

So it came as a great pleasure to find that Vampire Weekend’s newest album, Contra, has a Polaroid-type cover that matches their last, self-titled album perfectly. Vampire Weekend are going to find themselves in a Very Prominent Position on our shelves because of it. Oh, yeah, also because we love them. The first album was played repeatedly in our house, especially the tracks “Mansard Roof”, “A-Punk”, and “One (Blake’s Got a New Face)”, which I loathed but Chris adored. It’s indie pop, upbeat and full of fun times. While their new album follows a similar vein, where Vampire Weekend was indie-pop-rock, Contra is indie-pop-electronica.

“Horchata” opens the album; a beautiful track that smacks a little of Animal Collective in the lovely built-up-then-filled-out musical tornadoes that I love to hear. It’s a great song, I’m hardly one to complain when one good band journeys down the same road as another, and they arrive in different places, and much better ones than this analogy. It’s a good choice to open the album with, and is followed by more strong tracks. “White Sky” has a slightly dated synth line but the sung “oooooo”s are always welcome in my car’s cd player. “Holiday” is enjoyable, and not one of the most tropical of their tracks, which is surprising at least to me, as I always see the word “holiday” and think “palm trees!” even though I have yet to travel to Miami or Hawaii for my holidays. “California English” has a chorus that comes across as an early nineties Nintendo game soundtrack, possibly for a tropical-themed game; it’s basically 8-bit Caribbean tunes with vocalist Ezra Koenig singing in what appears to be fast forward over the track. It’s skewy, and doesn’t always match the mundane verse, but altogether a fun track. “Run” contains Ezra’s voice-breaker vocals that start the track as if it’s a version of “California English”, but it brightens into its own track. This track’s synths reminds me a little of the aforementioned Peter Gabriel, who the band do cite in two of the tracks on their previous album. Honestly though, I only discussed him earlier because he really does have the most awkward cd case in my collection. Not that it’s a sore point, of course, and not that I’m narrowing my eyes in its direction as I type. “Cousins” was the first single released from the album, a fast-paced track that feels a little like you’re listening to a track from the last album on 45 when it’s supposed to be on 33 1/3. Still, it’s a strong beginning for the album and was what motivated us to buy Contra, because we loved Vampire Weekend and wanted more. But is it more of the same? If it is, do I care in the least? No: I’d listen to their b-sides and everything because, for me, they’re a very solid and appealing band and their sprightly songs really do pep me up when I’m feeling down. Songs like “Taxi Cab” and “Giving Up the Gun” are moodier pieces, and while good, don’t quite have the frenetic cheerfulness that uplifts other tracks. “Taxi Cab” is replete with a tinkling keyboard line and more serious undertones, but quite lovely all the same.

“Giving Up The Gun” smacks a little of the eighties, which I survived most of once and am upset to see are having a revival when if I’m only twenty-seven and can recall it means that it is too new to be retro yet, surely, and still is in the land of abject humiliation. Regardless, the track doesn’t really appeal to me much, and when followed with flatter songs “Diplomat’s Sun” and semi-titular/wholly grammatically upsetting “I Think Ur a Contra”, leaves the album ending on a note that makes me say, “What a great album! I’ll listen to that again tomorrow,” which is a pretty thumbs-up thing to say, but is no, “What a great album! I’m going to put that on my iPod and listen to it obsessively for the next eight hours on my enormous and fantastic headphones whilst having a spiritual experience” which is the highest rating an album can get, and no, I’m not telling you what album elicited that response, and it was probably more like four hours anyway.

animal collective at the forum

Well. So we just got home from the Animal Collective gig and Chris is having a shower to wash off the smell of tightly-packed hipsters and has commanded me to write a review of it. So, here it is, even though I hadn’t expected to be writing gig reviews here.

Electronica gigs always bring out the whiner in me, no matter how obsessed I am with the band. “What are you DOING to my favourite song? Why can you not sing CLEARER? Can you please turn down the FEEDBACK so I can hear the rest of the song? Who made the people standing in front of me so TALL? Why is the music not LOUDER, I have not imploded yet and demand to!” etc etc. This was pretty much the same. After scoring what was possibly the greatest car park in the history of attending gigs - about ten metres down the road and, glory be, FREE - we went in at the stated time of eight o’clock to find everything running on time and support act Bachelorette just about to dive into her set. She is too adorable and, frankly, quite awesome. I think I will put her album on my xmas wish list.

Animal Collective itself was scheduled to start at nine fifteen, a respectable time for the elderly to attend on a Monday night. They started barely fifteen minutes later than that, in front of a giant banner with a wacky-eyed woman staring out at the crowd. Some inconsiderate [barrage of swear words] pushed me out of the way so they could stand in front of me and completely block the view I'd spent an hour and a half cultivating, but Chris whisked me away to another angle where I could see one and a half of the three band members. They launched almost immediately into Summertime Clothes, otherwise known as My Favourite Song In The History Of Ever, and embarrassingly I almost shed a tear, so thrilled was I to be standing in front of the band I’ve been obsessively banging on about for months.

And? AND? (You ask.) Well, much like other obsessed-over electronica outfit El Guincho, I was, um, kind of let down. NOOOO! (You wail.) It was still good, and I bopped along like a dork to the songs I knew and loved, espcially the divine Brother Sport. Alas, I feel they completely killed my beloved My Girls, kicking it and stomping it into an out-of-tune repetitive blather that left me a bit surprised and probably set the scene for my later crankiness.

The Forum’s a great venue, redone since we were last there seeing Nick Cave at the beginning of the year, and the lighting was fantastic and the sound lovely. The crowd was into it, the man in front of me appearing to emulate some kind of washing-machine and the dude next to me holding one hand out like he was doing The Swan (which is a dance, no?) The band didn't indulge in much banter with the audience, fair enough as they were busy blending the tunes together, sometimes successfully and sometimes in a way that made you feel like they just hit you in the face with a brick.

Well, I’m sounding like this evening was some kind of torture; really, it wasn’t. Chris has long accused me of always seeing the negative straight after a movie/band/so on, and as usual he is correct. (Like he was tonight when I said, “Just go into that paid parking there! Right there!” and he said, “Nah, I'll drive around the block and see what's there.” Bastard.) I don’t know why I do this, but I find it hard to get myself out of the mindset of pessimism straight away. It was still a good show, and Chris said it was much as he expected; I think I just need to learn that electronica gigs never live up to the expectations I put upon them, and next time I'll spend the hundred-plus dollars I spent on tickets on a ridiculously expensive set of headphones and listen to the band up real loud playing the songs correctly, which is clearly all I desire. This isn’t how I feel about all bands - ones that are all (or mostly) instruments can make me completely giddy live, but when it’s a person or three and a bunch of machines, I just can’t get into the spirit.

sons and daughters, this gift

This, Sons and Daughters’ second album following EP Love the Cup and first full album The Repulsion Box, was a slow burner in this house. We bought this early last year, when we were buying a whole lot more music than now. The two of us together in a music store were pretty much unstoppable: “Which should I buy? X or Y?” “Aw, but I wanted to buy Z.” “You buy Z, then.” “No, you buy X or Y.” “How about we buy both Z and X or Y?” “Okay, which one?” “Well, we’re already getting two albums, let’s get three.” “Should we? Oh, okay. And hey, did you see W over here?” etc. etc.

We became big fans of Sons and Daughters after seeing a video for their song “Johnny Cash” on Rage late one Saturday years ago. They were played virtually to death, such fans we were of the way their Scottish accents made the songs somehow better. Some of the songs were gritty, they were all fantastic up loud, felt a bit dark and gloomy yet fun. Altogether a rollicking good time was had on our thousands of car trips whilst playing their albums, paying special attention to songs like “Rama Lama”, “Taste the Last Girl” and “Dance Me In”.

This Gift was purchased a year ago, listened to about once, then lost in the pile of other albums we bought that day and dismissed as too different by Chris (and not really paid attention to by me, who was probably distracted by something shiny in a corner.) Then, this weekend, while heading to the city for a date with dumplings and crepes, Chris said, “Oh, let’s give this another go in the car, huh?”

And hey ho, I adored it. I’ve listened to the other albums so often I thought I’d probably be a bit disinterested in more of the same type of thickly sung tunes, but instead this feels a bit more upbeat, more rockabilly, and with more hooks that put me in an unexpectedly fantastic mood for the car trip, especially as we found parking pretty much straight away and for free. But I digress.

“Darling” is my favourite track, being listened on repeat by me at the moment, a peppy track that is very danceable, should I ever actually dance (insert hysterical laughter here.) I think there’s something I really enjoy when lines like “twisting in twisting out the knife” are sung in a way that has you picturing the vocalist dressed in a happy blue dress skipping about the place. “Iodine” has another lovely guitar line, a bit slower and perhaps a bit suited to walking quietly home together after, well, I was going to say a movie, but with a name like “Iodine” possibly home from poisoning someone. Perhaps instead I should just stop spamming you with my mental imagery. Ahem.

The album is not so different from the others, after listening to it more. Female vocalist Adele Bethel has more airtime than the usual 50/50 split between her and Scott Paterson, which perhaps changes the tone, but not a lot. The rockin’ “House in my Head” is a fast-paced, car-drivin’ type of track more in tune with their relentless other albums. The first track, “Gilt Complex”, is also similar, in that occasionally during the chorus you can feel like you’re being shouted at. “Split Lips” is lovely but makes me feel sad. The rest are all consistently great, but I’ll spare you my emotional rollercoaster rides, it’s enough that I have to hear myself think them.

At the risk of sounding shallow, I also find them an aesthetically pleasing band:

I will smooch ALL of them.

We are trying to save money at the moment, so finding these little neglected gems in our cd collection is keeping me going during this time of music-buying abstinence. It’s possible that I’m rose-coloured about it because it feels like our first new cd in years. It’s probably about nine or ten days, in reality, but the last one was not counted because of many reasons, i.e. “It’s on sale!”; “But we HAVE to own this one because we have this all of this band’s others”; “It’s the Where The Wild Things Are Soundtrack, come on”, etc. etc.

the raveonettes, in and out of control

At the last Raveonettes show at the HiFi Bar, I passed out. I can only assume, as I don’t drink or take drugs, that their frightening amount of cool overwhelmed me and I came over all faint. I’m still not sure. I regained consciousness after a few seconds and demanded of a worried Chris that we had to stay until they’d played one of my favourite tracks from previous album Lust Lust Lust—“Aly, Walk With Me”. This swoon-inducing band is made up of Sharin Foo and Sune Rose Wagner, who hail from Denmark but now live in the US. The two of them sing, play guitar, have a drum machine and enjoy a bit of feedback.

The Raveonettes, mostly, aren’t an overly complicated band. They sing about dancing and love and summer and heartbreak. They did a brilliant rendition of “My Boyfriend’s Back” on their 2005 album Pretty in Black. They are a rock band in the pure sense—they write great songs and you love them, want to dance to them and sing them really loud in a convertible Cadillac along Palm Beach. Track one from In and Out of Control, the impossibly cheery “Bang”, declares that “kids wanna bop/out in the street/fu-fu-fun/all summer long”. It’s a hard sentiment not to agree with. I’d like to have fun all summer long too, though it’s a shame it can’t extend to other seasons.

Personally, I find them to be the perfect band to listen to when you’re driving along at night. Somewhere between The Beach Boys, hipster rock and rockabilly, I feel a bit cooler just by listening to them. I’ll suggest their style is surfabilly, but keep in mind that I’m a bookseller who likes music and I don’t really know what I’m talking about. Not all their songs are sunny—or at least as sunny as the music itself sounds. A good example up until now would have been the essentially happy but initially sad tale “Love in a Trash Can”, another song from Pretty in Black and which I listened to on heavy repeat. Now, their harder tracks are best explained through track four of this new album. The first time I heard the song, in the car on the way home from work, me and Chris both started at the chorus and looked at each other, whispering, “What...what did she just say there?” The song, I learned after groping through my bag for the cover, is called “Boys Who Rape (Should All Be Destroyed)”. It’s a small song. “3 to 1 girl/how can you win/one horrid night/you hope that it’s a bad dream/they rip you to shreds/make you feel useless/you’ll never forget/those fuckers stay in your head.” The upbeat feel of the song really throws you for a loop, and to be honest it’s probably the catchiest song on the album, too. The chorus has an echo, which makes it even more compelling to sing with a friend, though you’ll undoubtedly feel a bit awkward doing so in a shopping centre when you remember what you’re actually singing.

There’s not a Raveonettes song out there that I don’t like. Their guitar licks are catchy and vibrant, Sharin Foo is cute as hell, and their tunes will probably make you want to dance with a tall, skinny guy with a quiff and Cuban heels. Don’t resist it. I certainly can’t.